The Short Story Club began in 2012 when Louise Doughty started setting creative writing exercises to accompany a monthly competition that ran in the Daily Telegraph. We all had so much fun that Louise even stayed on for an extra year (thank you Miss!), and we then continued playing by ourselves throughout 2014. However, we have now decided to call it a day in order to devote our time to personal writing (honest . . . we’re not skiving or anything . . . especially if Louise is reading this).

If you want to see what we got up to over the last three years then just click on the ‘Archives’ links to the right.

If you were hoping to sign up and start writing, fear not; there is still a thriving Creative Writing group here at MyTelegraph who would doubtless welcome new members.

From all of us at the SSC . . . hello, goodbye, and may you have as much fun writing as we did here.

(As discussed, I’ll put an open-ended post up on New Year’s Day for us to continue at our discretion, so this is more of an ellipsis than a full stop.)

I’m sure when Louise started the SSC back in January 2012 she didn’t for one moment think we’d still be here three years later (not least due to her kindness in going above and beyond throughout 2013). I’d never written a Short before that Paris exercise and probably wouldn’t have stuck around were it not for some encouraging words from Bay – god bless you – about my second attempt (the somewhat sicko ‘Julio’ . . . and to think I worried that a story about someone choking and eating girls might be inappropriate for a public blog, dedicated to sophisticated aesthetes at the cutting edge of the Short form .… Read more

As mentioned a couple of months ago, we probably need to sort out what to do with the SSC come the end of this year. Clearly things have been dwindling somewhat over the last few months, which is no bad thing as it means we’re all off writing our own stuff – just as Louise intended when she brought us together three years ago. Certainly I’d like to apologise for not being able to give anything like the time I’ve wanted of late: I’ve had to trim one from family, work or hobby and I’m afraid hobby’s taken the hit.

I’m therefore in favour of running things down at the end of this year. The SSC has been fantastic fun for us all, otherwise we wouldn’t have kept coming back like the suckers we are. We were only meant to last one year, then Louise gave us another in her free time (thank you Miss!), then we’ve kept it going ourselves for a third. That’s a pretty good run, I’d say. So it would perhaps be nice to bring things to a definitive end, rather than just fading away.

So . . . what does everyone think?

If we do decide to end this year, I’ll set a ‘What the SSC has meant to me’ exercise on Friday 26th December (so don’t get all blubby below, you sopsters), then we’ll have a final ‘Goodbye and good luck’ post on Wednesday 31st.

Kipples

PS: Don’t forget, for those who still want a monthly challenge there’s always the Creative Writing Group on MyT. And who know, maybe Louise will return one day to give us another nudge . . .?

My thoughts on religion are mostly pagan. I love the traditions of May Day and Harvest Festival and would rather celebrate communal Roman Saturnalia or Midwinter Solstice than Christmas, though I’m sure they were as commercialised way back in the day.

December’s Bumper Challenge:

If you’ve never written an end-of-year round robin to two hundred of your closest family, friends and celebrities you’d like to meet, they don’t know what they’re missing. You’re sending them a photocopy by second-class post with or without a card. This is all about you, your nearest and dearest, your prizewinning pets, and your manifold achievements throughout the year. Don’t hold back.

AND / OR

What seasonal rituals take place chez vous? Have you pardoned a turkey or forced participation from unwilling children when they’d rather be hanging out with their mates? Has anyone truly appreciated their present or have you ever received something you’ve always wanted? Have you burnt the dinner and had to go out or go hungry? Are you and your guests more than happy to see one another or the back of one another for another year?

AND / OR

A posse of upstanding citizens alias The Neighbourhood Watch has grassed your all-night festivities to the Old Bill and you’ve been summoned to the Magistrates Court for keeping a disorderly house. You’re skint, the carpet’s covered in broken glass and vomit, and all your so-called mates have scarpered. What do you do?

No prizes for guessing today’s post. Sad to lose PD James. I remember marveling earlier this year that she was still writing at 94 (I can’t even manage it with those digits reversed). Clearly she’s a contemporary star, but how do we think history will judge her? I’m not qualified to comment, but I’m sure there are some ardent Jamesians out there with some insight into what she did and how she’ll be remembered.

When the Beerfridge was resident in La France profond, the moon seemed to control quite a lot of what went on. You could only shear your sheep or cut your wood when the “moon was right”. The moon not being right provided the perfect excuse, the object to shake a fist at in blame when anything went wrong. She married when the moon wasn’t right. She must have done because she was divorced soon afterwards. Mal a tete; blame the moon and not the moonshine. It’s pretty much the same with writing (or is it?). The Beerfridge needs to be in the mood. He needs to be stimulated by something in order to write. He cannot just sit down and write without “the moon being right”. So the Friday challenge (not so much a challenge; more of a survey) is what makes it right for you to write? Where do you do it? When do you do it? How do you do it? What helps you to do it? I seem to remember we talked about this sort of thing before when Miss was in charge but I cannot remember the response. Perhaps the moon wasn’t right.

I did wonder something earlier, however; how long have we all been writing stories . . . and what got us started?

Not that I wondered this while spiraling into a depression about my own rather pitiful ‘time-to-product’ ratio. I mean, it’s not like I’ve been writing for well over a decade and never actually finished anything. The very thought. Why next you’ll be suggesting my repeated references to writing as ‘just a hobby’ are a wilting fig leaf beneath which I attempt to sweep this shameful legacy of skive.

Hah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

You guys.

I can’t really pinpoint what started me off, though. I remember someone reading an academic paper I’d written and saying ‘This is quite funny . . . you should write comedies’ (which in retrospect was quite dispiriting because I was actually trying to sound brainy). And another nudge was probably my body calling time on playing rough boys games, which left me looking for something I could do while sipping a hot chocolate (rather than an oxygen tube).

Not very exciting, I’m afraid, but in my case the truth is rarely stranger than fiction. I’m pretty confident my SSC chums can do a lot better on that score, however.

I’ve really enjoyed reading the posts over on ‘The Tweets of Terror!‘ so how about upgrading it to our First Friday Challenge for this month? It seems a shame to waste Halloween just because it’s at the end of October (rather than the beginning of November). And we haven’t really had a stab at scary stuff for quite a while. So if you’re game, toddle over to the previous post . . . and spook it up.

SSC old-timers may recall Louise setting a particularly fiendish Halloween exercise back in the first year (oh so long ago now . . .) where we had to scare our reader in just one line. I found it incredibly hard, as the art of horror is often in the set-up and anticipation (nothing to do with me slamming the buffers of my talent, of course).

I thought initially about just repeating that task, to see if we find it any easier two years on (now we’re all awesome). However, a bit more flexibility might be fun, so how about trying to scare in under 140 characters (but structured at your discretion) OR just with a normally written paragraph (with perhaps ≈ 200 words as a limit)? It might be interesting to see how each approach twists and tugs at our gobblesome pulsybrains.